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Friends, our old Windows 2008 server is having frequent hardware issues so we planned to move all the accounts from that server to our new Windows 2008 server 64 bit at new datacenter. We have several hundreds of users, 1279 domains and 250+ MSSQL and MySQL databases in old server. If it's helm I can do this smoothly through HelmRestoreTool. Is there any tools available in DNP for migration? Further more this one is time consuming if we need to create every users, spaces, domains, mail accounts, databases, etc.. server is already critical so we want to move things asap. Also I don't want to mess up anything and make migration smooth with less downtime. I will be setting up new DNP server very soon. What is the best way to accomplish this task? Has anyone experienced the same problem? Any advice you provide will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
 

 

Anybody?

have you considered virtualizing your enviroment? vConverter from VMWare is free and it does a great job for moving your phisical machine to virtual environment (it converts virtual to virtual machine too) across the internet. One of its best features (for me) is synchronizing source and destination after copying operation.

EDIT: In you case you should install VMWare ESXi 4.0 (released today and it's free), install vConverter agent on your actual Windows, run from another computer vConverter and connect to your source Windows. This will allow to move your environment to new place without installing new instance of Windows.

 

GrZeCh, thanks a bunch for your reply. Your advice sounds good but I want new server be physical not virtual. Source server is Windows Server 2008 x64 and also destination server is WIndows Server 2008 x64. If I use vconverter in new server to move contents from source to destination server will the destination server can be later changed to physical after the transfer is complete? Will there be any issues, downtime during transfer? I've not used VMWare ESXi. Is there any alternatives for this? Kindly advice.

 Thanks a lot!

vConverter only allows conversion P2V and V2V. There is no coming back to physical. I know that there are some software for this but it costs a lot and I didn't tested this way. During conversion source server is working normally. The biggest problem here can be amount of data you want to transfer. This can take some time for transferring whole server. Another issue is probably different IP for your server in new datacenter (chaning all IPs in DNS, mail server, IIS - this can take some time). The biggest advantage of virtual environment is that virtual machine can be transferred to any serwer which is supported by ESXi and it will work without problems. There will be no driver installations etc. :). System in virtual environment boots quite faster than on physical server. I'm not sure for what alternatives are you asking. There are other hypervisors but VMWare vConverter is the best solution for moving data between two hosts (this is of course my opinion). If you want to go with ESXi then I think you should test and know it a little before using it in production.

GrZeCh, thank you for the reply. Here's my problem, I don't want virtualization for this(BTW, I'll try this in my test environment :) ). What I'm asking is if there's any migration tool or software for DNP to simplify the process(like HelmRestoreTool/Helm Tool box in helm we can migrate everything between the servers) if not what is the best way to accomplish this? Or only possibility is to create users, spaces, sites, mail boxes, databases individually in new server and start manual migration one by one :( ? I can do this but this is time consuming process. Any valuable advice you people provide will be greatly apprecited. I really want this fixed please.

Thanks a lot!

 

I understand your problem but as you can see no one has replyed in this topic so far and I'm 99% sure that there is no such a tool as restore tool for DNP. I think how much job you have for migration depends what services you have. For example SimpleDNS, SmarterMail can be moved without bigger problems to a new place. DNPEnterprise server can easily be moved too. Databases from SQL Server (mdf files with logs) can be attached to a new server too (it takes some time but it can be done). Biggest problem can be with IIS. You can try stopping IIS on destination server and copying C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.config file from source server to a new windows but probably it will be not enough (I'm not sure how about anonymous accounts created in source Windows).

 Thank you for the suggestions. I'm thinking of doing either of these ways-

 1. Backup DNP database from source server, install necessary components and DNP in destination server(at new DC) and restore the DNP database. Will this work? If so what other things to consider after doing this? I hope this will rebuild the entire things? (Correct me if I'm wrong)

2. Backup entire server including system state, all files/folders using either of Windows Backup or CDP, etc.. and perform bare metal restore in destination server?

3. Time consuming process - Create users, spaces, sites, etc.. and make manual move.

Feel free to update me if you have any other solutions for this I'd be thankful.

I have read migration can be done from Helm to DNP, even from other control panels to DNP as well. I wonder why not there is migration tool for just from DNP to DNP. Ok, forgot about migration tool.. is there possibility to accomplish through good scripts? Come on friends.

Thanks a lot!

 Any one? DNP team....

"Me too" :-(

Slightly different problem: Full install on one system, on second system only DNP server. trying to migrate weak second system to a stronger third. Old one W2003x86, SQL2005 new W2008, SQL2008 all 64 bit. SImply backing up and restoring through DNP doesn't do the job ...

 Any hints?

Hi lechler, How did you backup and restore? Just full backup(including system state) and restore into new server or just DNP database alone restored?

@ Experts and DNP team, what is the solution for this? We need update please.

Thanks!

 

winwiz:

Hi lechler, How did you backup and restore? Just full backup(including system state) and restore into new server or just DNP database alone restored?

Neither, as highlighted in http://help.dotnetpanel.com/Administrator%20Guide/Backup%20and%20Restore%20Hosting%20Resources.aspx?Image=server_details.png&Revision=0 I did a backup inside DNP, which creates a *.dnpak-file (renamed ZIP-File with XML file for structure and ZIPs of spaces and databases).

Backup old seems to bee OK, restore on new server only consumes time, no visible effects (even after tweaking paths inside BackupCatalog.xml to match new server configuration) ... 

 

For moving between IIS6 and IIS7 (that's probably biggest problem) you can try to use this tool:

http://forums.iis.net/1144.aspx

http://blogs.iis.net/msdeploy/archive/2009/04/17/new-release-of-ms-deploy-rc1.aspx

http://forums.iis.net/t/1157640.aspx

I am playing with ESXi and i am very impressed.

I imported a complete server (windows2003) with almost 250GB of disk from one datacenter to another, from physical to virtual, and everything was working perfectly!

 

Does anyone have an easy way to update the IP address of all the websites on IIS?

Since we are moving DC we will have new IP addresses, so this will be a pain to update....

 

Any suggestions are welcome!

 

best regards

pcastro:

I imported a complete server (windows2003) with almost 250GB of disk from one datacenter to another, from physical to virtual, and everything was working perfectly!

 

yep. Using virtualization makes life so simple :)

pcastro:

Does anyone have an easy way to update the IP address of all the websites on IIS?

Go to C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config with your notepad. Open applicationHost.config and use find & replace to replace IP addresses. After this save it and run iisreset command. That's all :)